@yoshi1001:
I'd love to hear your pro-digital arguments. So far there haven't been many offered... why not post your opinion?
For me, I'm pretty well entrenched in physical formats whenever possible.
As others have already mentioned, the cost-benefit ratio of buying retail tends to work out better for me than buying digital. Physical games regularly get discounted and go on sale. Savvy gamers can often use trade-in deals to acquire games at a significant discount if they do some research and shop selectively. Plus the used/trade market provides an excellent source of extended value once you are done with a game - something that has saved me a great deal of money in the past year after joining an excellent game trading website.
...
eh backwards compatibility as demonstrated by the Vita
Or demonstrated by the PS3? Oh wait... PSN games aren't compatible with PS4. Or
maybe they will be, if you don't mind streaming and being always online and paying a subscription fee to have access to your games. Hopefully lag and unlimited broadband access aren't issues for you, because if they are then you are outta luck.
With digital, you give up control. Maybe the games will be supported going forward, maybe not. Maybe they will still be accessible in the future, maybe not.
With physical, I'm still playing my old NES games on demand whenever I want. I also have the option to trade them for new games, sell them for cash, or loan them to friends. As someone who enjoys collecting games this is an important distinction for me. The biggest concern is from physical damage or theft.
One of the big advantages to digital is that if my 3DS XL were to be lost then I would have a financial record of all the games that I purchased for the system for Nintendo to see and return to me once I bought a new system and gave them a police report.
Nintendo is a poor example here because of their policy of tying digital downloads to specific hardware. This is much easier with other platforms that use an account-based ownership system. However, let's talk about Nintendo hardware for now.
So with digital, all you need to do is buy new hardware, file a police report, talk with Nintendo customer service, send them the report, and even then you still need to redownload gigs and gigs of data before having access to your content? Wow. Sounds like you won't be gaming for days while jumping through hoops. Oh yeah, and you'll be starting over for every game you own since
all save files are gone in one fell swoop. Hope that doesn't bug you.
With retail I've probably only lost a single game (the one in my system at that time; if they've broken into my home and stolen my collection then I've got bigger things to worry about and can deal with the insurance company later). In this case, to start playing again I just need to buy new hardware and put a different game in. Boom: portable gaming available! Sure it costs more to replace a physical game, but it's faster and easier
and I probably paid less for a physical copy to start with.
When does buying digital make sense?
* When you know you will want to keep that game permanently.
* When you want immediate access without having to worry about whether the game is in the system at any given moment.
* When you don't mind paying a premium and removing any option to sell or trade the game later.
Honestly, there are extremely few games checking off each of those boxes for me. Other people might be in a different position where they don't mind the restrictions... but I'm not buying into the digital revolution until (a) there is no other option, or (b) there is a meaningful benefit for me to do so.
(Buying digital games also makes sense when games just aren't available in physical format, although being the only option doesn't necessarily make it a good option.)